You don't need $3800 worth of panels unless you need to run the hair-dryer 24/7 or you neglect to implement some storage and inversion system.

you would look at the kWh's needed for an average day, add 50% and make sure your solar panel array could produce that given a 50/50 overcast day. Or something like that.

obviously for doing work of a scientific nature is best done in metric. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But I think some of what pz, (the original biased bigot *grin*), was saying that its sometimes useful for people to know both and that in the UK, Aust and NZ lots of people do know both. I don't agree about the Engineers being able to have a convo in imperial or metric.
Personally, I like the imperial system for some lengths. A foot is a very convienent length when talking about height, short distances ( 3m) and length of materials. I find myself using feet quite often when pointing out an object which is 6 foot off the ground, or 2 feet from the wall, etc. Its just the level of precision you can get for those measures of distance which is alot more convenient than 1.8m, or 70cm or 2.2m. You can describe most distances in multiples of half a foot with enough accuracy to convey meaning. In metres is harder..but that said, once your out past 5-6 metres I think its switches back the other way.

Miles and Kilometres is completely different. Neither of them are more convenient than the other so I use the metric.

I live in Australia and my parents were brought up on imperial and it changed (in 1966) so they got to know that one aswell (they were late teens in 1966).
The other thing that contributes to our familiarity is our standard ruler. I grew up with 30cm/12inch rulers.. I suppose its the same today. But I've always been adept at switching inches to mm and back. So I think its fairly common over here.

another company called SSG (from which Infinite Interactive was born) got this right.

They took the Warlords universe (which was all role-play turn-based stratefy) and set off to conquer the growing RTS world with their Battlecry series..
the game were ALOT of fun. Perhaps not as polished as the Blizzard offerings, but worthy games.. and most importantly - they nailed the RPS thing, which IIRC Warcraft3 introduced later.

so the Battlecry games had RPS before Warcraft, and they got it right in my opinion.
You could advance a character of 20-40 classes, from 9-16 different races (the numbers grew with each subsequent game in the series)..

but I must say, Starcraft does what it does, well!

I still do this sometimes.. put the cheats for high speed and no damage on, and play a game of Survival in San Francisco.
A combination of simplistic 3D models of hills, cops chasing you and 160+mph driving made for lots of fun.

If you could hit the top of a hill at 150+ and glance off a police car you could launch yourself through the air and land 4-6 blocks away.. I would try for ages, just for the thrill of "landing it" by coming down on a road instead of inside a building.
And if the car was still driveable that was just too good to be true; because of the no-damage cheat, you only had to hope you landed on your wheels.

awesome fun!!!

hmm, I've seen a few polls in my time, but never have a been motivated to stare danger in the face and suggest there's a missing option - but now there is, I don't drink coffee, I was considering pretending the poll was about Coke, but i stopped drinking that aswell.

Its seems an odd oversight, there's nearly always a "I've just found a clever way to say that this doesn't apply to me!!" option at the end. But no cheese this time.

so i register my formal whinge, and brave the flames of the coffee drinking anti-poll-option-whinging ones.
Please let me express my non-caffeinated persuasion with respect and dignity. Thank you Slashdot!

The American version of human rights is essentially a dressing up of the childish "don't tell me what to do"... but in any case, its irrelevant for this situation.

The issue is not that the Aus govt. refused to classify the games, but that they weren't classified which is illegal - If they get classified, then everyone's happy again. (including the people who raised hell when their rights were disturbed)

or maybe I'm wrong :)

hey us too. Only we use the Transformers names for remote embedded Linux machines running on a GUMSTIX.
We thought about re-starting hte naming scheme to show the customer where the unit was installed, but what about when they have more than one unit.
This scheme lets our associative brain work wonders.. like SRW have Jazz, Echuca Saleyards have Rumble, Cressy Irrigation has CrankCase, CIT have Inferno and SoundWave and Ratchet and lots of others.

Its actually developed into a fun task to go and find a new name when we commission a new unit.